That's oversimplifying the issue because the playing field is not fair. U.S. developers are competing against overseas developers who can afford to work for 1/5th of the salary that U.S. developers can afford to work for.

Define "afford". You expect a certain standard of living, which is largely determined by your perception of the standard of living that other people around you enjoy.

There is also the issue of what happens to our own country if we continue down this path...

And here we go. I so expected this. You are appealing to my sense of "us vs them". If the people in *our country* acted in such a way as to acknowledge the real value and worth of the talents and accomplishments of the people in "their country", then the people in *our country* would no longer enjoy the relatively obscene standard of living that we currently enjoy.

"Unemployment goes up, consumer spending goes down, the federal deficit goes up, and we enter a spiral of recession that just keeps getting worse until eventually..."

Until eventually... we in the US realize that we have been members of a privileged aristocracy, representing about 4% of world population, all living like Kings, and expecting that it is our birthright.

Look. Maybe taking your family out for Big Macs costs you more than it would for a guy in India.

But it sure looks to me that the guys in India work a hell of a lot harder to take their families out for Big Macs. And it sure looks to me that those folks do the rest of us (as in "the rest of us World Citizens") a lot more good than fat and sassy US devs whining about how they should be allocated artificial advantages over other devs simply because they are American.

Obviously, the people on the other side of the world are people too.

The people on other side of the world? How very abstract. You really haven't given very much thought to it, have you? Because you have been far too absorbed in your own, big to you, but relatively small problems.

Look. If things are so bad in the part of the US where you live, maybe you should come live in Oklahoma. I do OK, with alright skills and education. And I feel pretty privileged.